


Shop 201

by heixicanadragon



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Community College, F/F, POV Character of Color, all your faves are brown, domestic community au, racelifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 06:17:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heixicanadragon/pseuds/heixicanadragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Request for Rapunstrid for the prompt Unbind Me:<br/>"...a drabble about one character freeing another, or the other way around, or something among the lines [be it freeing them from jail, from handcuffs, from a trap, from a curse, feel free to specify.]"</p>
<p>An incident in shop class involved hair. And a lot of strong feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shop 201

"Rapunzel! You ok?" The pounding on the door had recommenced, and it was now accompanied by a distinctly worried voice. 

Rapunzel, nervously gathering her hair over her shoulder and into her hands, glanced down at the gap between the stall door and the tiled floor, wincing at the wide flung stance of sneakers topped by sweats. _Wooh boy, Astrid seems serious._ She quickly swiped at her eyes before picking up the scissors off her lap again. _Well, I mean business too. And she's just going to have to accept that._ The resolve that formed at that thought brightened her heart. A little. Just enough to start snipping.

~~~~

The sobs and sniffles that had emanated from behind the beat-up bathroom stall door had stopped, and Astrid instead heard the unmistakable sound of scissors working.

_What is this girl doing?_ she wondered, and repeated it out loud for the benefit of the girl in question as she stepped back from the door, leaned against the wall, and fought the temptation to invade privacy and look under the stall door to see what was up. And, she was finding, her classmate was often up, or down, or backwards, upside-down, side-ways, _something_ unexpected, whether it was discovering Rapunzel speed-posing inside window sills one afternoon before Shop 201 (as many window sills in one minute as humanly possible), or spotting her across the room staring into space and absentmindedly drawing perfect concentric circles freehanded, or bumping into her while she, laughing hysterically, was hanging upside-down from a tree in the campus quad, her shirt slipping around her ribs, her hair reaching all the way down and brushing the grass gently as the girl swung herself from her legs hooked over the branch.

Astrid's stomach hurt whenever she thought of that moment. The girl could have been hurt if she'd fallen, after all. The girl. Her almost friend. Who shared only the one shop class elective with her and yet seemed to pop up everywhere on campus. Who seemed to fly, or float, as she walked, or posed inside window sills, or hung upside down from trees. Rapunzel, who seemed more like a bird than a person, sometimes.

Rapunzel, who had scared her to death today.

Astrid shook her head free of the resulting image and stepped toward the stall door again. The crying hadn't started up again, but the noise of snipping scissors had stopped. She tapped the door a lot more quietly than before.

"…'Zelle. Please come out." She swallowed down the lump in her throat, staring at the graffiti next to her fingers, as she leaned her forehead next to them. "I… I think--I must have done something to upset you. I'm sorry, for what it's worth. I didn't mean to… it's not… You weren't… I'm… I was rude. And rough." _Por favor. Lo siento._ She bit back the words.

The door moved under her hand, outward, and Astrid staggered back as the force of the door pushed her away. 

Standing there in front of her, red-eyed and grim faced, with hair in hand, was Rapunzel.

With hair in hand?

~~~

Rapunzel looked at the woman in front of her, whose big brown eyes were wider than usual, whose eyebrows were arching behind her black bangs, whose lips were parted in shock. Their eyes met.

Rapunzel gulped and marched out of the stall past Astrid Hernandez to the sink, set the braid of hair down with the scissors on the counter top, and turned the faucet. She glimpsed Astrid behind her in the mirror as she washed her hands of the last bits of tiny hair clippings. Astrid, still the picture of surprise, was scanning her face and her now-shoulder-length brown hair, which was beginning to come undone from the end of the chopped-off braid and break into unsightly fuzz underneath the purple spotted bandana.

It was almost funny. Almost worth hacking her precious hair off. Almost.

She summoned her courage as she wiped her hands off on a paper towel. "Yeah, after what you said, I decided I'd cut my hair." Her tone was a lot more biting than she'd intended. _Hmm. Guess I'm angry._

Astrid sputtered. "I--I… only said that your braid needed to get put away--" 

Rapunzel spun around. "You also yanked it almost clean off my head and then pushed me! Was that called for?"

Astrid suddenly loomed taller than ever. "No. You--"

Rapunzel suddenly felt the bathroom sink against her butt as the taller woman closed in on her. But she wasn't done. "Then you said that I might not be suited for this. In front of a whole class of boys! They laughed!" The memory rankled, and she felt her eyes burning again. She looked up, meeting Astrid's eyes again, which seemed unreadable. "But I'm good at this! You know what my dream is! I thought you took me seriously, even if everyone else in Shop doesn't."

She was suddenly face first into Astrid's oil stained, sawdust-covered shirt, as Astrid hugged her, her strong arms wrapping around Rapunzel's back. Rapunzel fought her instinct to hug back, but it was so hard.

"Rapunzel." Astrid's voice held the last syllable in the way that Rapunzel especially liked, rhyming it with 'gazelle,' which she liked even more. 

(Not that she'd admit that. Ever.)

"Rapunzel. You scared me. Your hair. It got caught. It. I barely got it out of the saw in time."

Astrid's breathless rendition -- of how the braid had fallen out of Rapunzel's handkerchief while she had been watching another student use a drill while also standing next to the circular saw -- chilled her. She suddenly felt shaky and cold again, and began clinging to the arms that were holding her.

"So, you're saying… that I almost died."

"Yep." 

"And then you throwing me half-way across the room and yelling at me… wasn't…"

"I was scared. And I really need you to start being more careful. Paying attention to all your surroundings, not just blanking out on the rest of the world. You do that a lot, you know," she said, disengaging from the hug, and holding Rapunzel at arm's length, better to stare her down. Rapunzel felt herself shiver.

"Ah, but, now… my hair is permanently short… I mean, not permanently, but… no chance of getting caught in any moving gears! Not anymore!" She suddenly felt a little lighter for the loss.

Astrid snorted. "Don't push your luck, kid. You still need to get better habits. Your art… well, I've never seen such amazing detail work in Shop. But your work safety. Could. Use some work."

Rapunzel giggled, nervously, before smiling and nodding. How many times had her mom told her to stop daydreaming or stay focused or pay attention all her life? This seemed like a huge "I told you so" from her. And it would be, if she decided to explain the sudden haircut. _But!… Wow…! Astrid Hernandez, top Shop class student! SHE THINKS MY DETAIL WORK IS AMAZING!_

~~~~

Astrid walked the now happily skipping, bouncy-haired girl back to the workshop. Well, walked behind her, more than a little mystified by Rapunzel's choice of her jeans' back pocket as the receptacle for her braid. Rapunzel seemed to be walking on air even more than usual… in contrast to how somber Astrid now felt. 

_This kid. I have a feeling that I'll need to keep an even closer eye on her than before. Or else she's going to start dancing in the middle of class and cause an amputation. It'd be Hiccup's luck, too._ She smirked at the thought of her clumsy friend from high school, who was perhaps even more hopelessly scatterbrained. The image of Rapunzel's braid wrapping in the saw sprang back to mind, overlaid with Rapunzel swinging upside down from the tree branch, hair brushing the grass as her hips worked the branch back and forth.

_Maybe I should just make sure I keep a table near her for the rest of the semester._  


End file.
